#zimwriting

There was a tree before the Zimmermann house, and in the spring it blossomed pink and beautiful before it bore sweet cherries in the summer, which were coveted by the young people in the village, though none were brave enough to sneak onto the property to steal some. None save of course for Kent Parson.

The reality of the thing was that Kent Parson was not, he said, afraid of anything and so to him Robert Zimmermann’s cherry tree represented nothing more than a goal to achieve. And perhaps to most this sounded like some kind of lie that came from the infatigable pride which only the very poorest possessed, but Jack had heard enough stories about Parson and the things he did that he knew it was the truth.

Jack was twelve when his father caught Kent Parson climbing the cherry tree in the front yard after the sun went down one July evening. Kent, who was the same age and defiant, swore some gadelles he had certainly learned while sneaking around on the wharves, while Robert pulled him into the house with a tight hand on his collar. Jack watched and heard that part from his open bedroom window on the second floor though he did not go down to eavesdrop on the rest, knowing his father would not take kindly to that.

In fact his father did not take kindly to most things Jack did, though the other villagers didn’t know that. Jack was weak and shy and sickly and mostly wanted to read books which Jack’s mother Alicia indulged but which his father detested, as he wanted to begin grooming Jack to become a business-man too. To take over the store, eventually, though that seemed too far away to even think about. Robert wanted to open another store further up the coast near Digby but as it was didn’t have the manpower or resources to do it until the war ended. 

In the morning Jack woke early so he could go pick cherries for his mother’s breakfast but found instead Kent Parson sitting at his kitchen table with his mouth stained red.

He stayed with them through the summer, and Jack never asked why or even went out of his way to speak with the boy though he gleaned from his mother’s gossip on the telephone with her sisters back in Boston that it was because Kent had been living in barns and on the sofas of whoever would take him and mostly eating day-old bread from the bakery and dried fish and crab apples and the clams he dug up from the bay during low tide and smoked over fires he made on the beach. And the more Robert loved Kent it seemed the Jack the more he hated his real son, as was proven in the fall, when Robert told them both that he was putting them to work on the wharf to clean and go down into the hulls of lobster boats, where they were small enough to fit into the pits where the fish was held, and throw them up to the fishermen and older boys waiting to load them into crates for Robert to sell to the States.

At times it felt like Jack was drowning in lobster and the smell would stay beneath his skin forever and his hands would never heal from the ways the lobsters’ juices would seep into his cracked and cut-open fingers and infect them. Salt felt like a weapon upon them, upon him. One of the ocean’s many.

But at least it shut his father up.

Of course it meant he could no longer go to school, as the season started in mid-November until May or June, and the preparation work began a month before. And then summer was for repairing boats and traps and digging for clams and diving for scallops and for some going up the coast and even to Cape Breton to fish the summer season there, where they had crab as well as lobster. Some fished tuna and herring, cod, mackerel. Some spent the summer in mink farms, some became draveurs, raftsmen driving logs down rivers, some went up to the Annapolis valley to find farmwork, some went even further, to the mines or to steel plants. There was money in all of it, though not always good money, and Boston was only a few hours’ boat ride away, so some said the villages along the French Shore suffered less than others as the war went on. At least in the Bay of Fundy they were more or less safe from the German U-Boats which sometimes came close to Halifax Harbour or even nearer, in Shelburne.

So Jack and Kent worked year-round from twelve-years-old on, and lived together almost as brothers, and it was Jack who found Kent when he began wandering again, and who taught him to read, a little, and, when Robert grew tired of Kent’s chaotic and often insubordinate nature, Jack who brought him to his favourite spots in the woods, who taught him to play hockey in the roads and on frozen ponds.

Alicia, when she was not busy with her quilting group and tea parties in Yarmouth and other such things, took it upon herself to teach them both how to play the piano, which Jack hated but Kent, somehow, excelled at. His fingers were nimble and his mind was clever and he learned quickly. So with something akin perhaps to jealousy Jack asked his mother for a fiddle and took it upon himself to learn. Robert had been angry when he found out and Jack had played louder. But the music was just another thing he and Kent could do together, now, and it seemed Kent knew which tunes Jack would play next without prior warning, and by the time they were sixteen they were playing in kitchens at parties and both knew some dance steps.

Kent spoke English, by virtue of having been born to a Yarmouth fisherman’s wife who died in childbirth, and though the language was something to be mocked and hated when it came from Jack’s mouth, from Kent the girls found it charming. As such Jack spoke to him mostly in French.

By then the war was over and they had each been given a place on a boat, a friend of Jack’s father who was old and needed much help, and whose crew had found other, better, newer boats. His name was Éphraim à Cyprien Bourque and in addition to his lobster license and his boat the Honorine-Marie, he was a bootlegger who made his own moonshine out of his back shed and who sold it to whoever could pay.

Jack’s first day at sea made him sick of it, so sick he could barely stand or look out at the rolling expanse, and somehow the only thing that helped was some moonshine Kent had bought from their captain the week previous. It made no sense but neither did the way Kent laughed when he brought the bottle to Jack’s lips, unmocking, perhaps relieved.

They were sixteen, and they were sailors, and maybe more or less than brothers, and musicians, and Kent had many friends and even girlfriends on occasion, and they brought home money with which Jack could buy more moonshine. Robert said nothing about it or about anything regarding Jack and Kent these days as he had finally opened his new store and though he made it clear he still wanted Jack by his side eventually perhaps, he and Kent had at some point begun to resent each other and so wouldn’t speak, though Kent had not yet left. It was something Jack didn’t understand and perhaps never would or wouldn’t try to. Alicia saw nothing and Éphraim only wanted his money. In any case Jack and Kent were some of the best workers he’d ever had on his boat, he said, despite how Kent picked fights with the boys on the others wharves at barn parties and sang too much before the sun rose at sea and Jack spoke too little always.

But Jack came to love the ocean, perhaps even more than he feared it. As powerless as it made him feel he thought sometimes he needed that, to be reminded of his smallness, his impotence – and anyway Kent always said he felt the opposite. Like if he could conquer the sea he could conquer anything. 

In the first summer of the new decade Éphraim gave Jack the boat. They signed the proper papers and the license and just like that the Marie-Honorine was his. July 4th, 1950. Happy birthday, Kent. Eighteen years old. It was a surprise, to an extent – certainly they had both been wondering without saying aloud who they each thought would get it. Privately Jack thought both expected Kent.

“Es-tu paré,” Jack asked Kent the night before Dumping Day, when they would go out and lay their traps and coloured buoys with their new crewman, Norbert à Édouard à P’tit Joe Surette. They were sitting on the stern of the boat as it was an unseasonably warm night for November.

Are you ready.

“Pour n’importe-quoi,” Kent said, “pis pour toute.”

For anything and for everything.

Later he drank almost enough to mask the taste of Kent, and of salt, perpetual on their lips. A weapon, both.

until it’s not. the bulb flickers off and bitty drops the socks from his arms, because the feeling is immediate. creeping in, squeezing his throat, taking his head and spinning it around. the fuck was he thinking? this closet is small. tiny, even, and he can’t breathe. he left his phone on the bed and his eyes haven’t adjusted to the darkness -- or maybe he shut them tight and hasn’t been able to open them yet. it’s so fucking dark in here, and he remembers, he remembers --

he turns, nudges a sock with his toe as he does, and. and there’s some light from the windows in the bedroom creeping in from the cracked door, so he runs, and makes it to the bed gasping for lungfuls of air. the first thing he sees is his phone lit up with a text from jack: radio said the power’s out. i’m on my way home. be there soon. and one from his mom, from earlier, asking about how his weekend went. he hesitates, and looks back at the door now thrown wide open, then picks up the phone.

“dicky! i was just going to call. i saw something on the news about a storm and was wondering if you were bundled up,” mama says before he can even greet her. he takes a breath as the last of the dizziness fades away.

“not dicky anymore, mama,” bitty says. 

“oh,” she says. she’s frowning, he can tell. “alright. everything okay, baby?”

“yeah, mama. everything is good. is daddy around? i’ve got,” he says, and in the kitchen the microwave beeps in time with the closet light stuttering back on, “i’ve got something to tell you.”

holster:

“tommy?” holster says before he can stop himself, and the man in front of him turns and stares. still, after all these years, unmistakeable. a slight twist to his lips from a cleft palate long since fixed by surgery, and a scar on his chin from -- “tommy bennett?”

“big adam,” tommy bennett says. no one’s called holster that in years. he’d almost forgotten.

almost.

the pepsi fridge he’s standing next to hums and the door to the bodega tinkles but they just stare at each other. 

“i haven’t seen you since, since -- well, how are you,” holster says. tommy is still half a foot shorter than holster is, but he’s standing straight and his shoulders are square.

“what do you want,” tommy says. which is, well, fair.

“nothing,” holster says. “nothing. or, well -- ”

“i just want some sprite, man,” tommy says. he gestures to the fridge holster is blocking with all his bulk. 

“oh. i’m sorry,” holster says. “like, not just about the sprite. about the, the, the, you know. the everything. i’m sorry.” his hands move to point to his own chin but he drops them halfway through the motion. “i’m sorry.”

tommy stares. “okay.”

“okay. really though, i’m --”

“sorry, i get it. can i...?”

“yeah. yeah,” holster says. he moves away from the glass, leaving a space in the condensation the shape of his hand. “i hope. i hope you’re doing well,” he says. 

he gets no answer.

when he opens the door to the car, stomach twisting in nausea, ransom just raises an eyebrow at his empty hands.

“the fuck took you so long? and you didn’t even get any snacks,” ransom says. 

holster turns on this car. “i’ll tell you later,” he says. “i think we’ve got chips at the haus, anyway.”

“alright, bro,” ransom says. “whatever you want.”

the neon lights of the store illuminate the rearview mirrors when holster looks back and the snow starts to fall.

shitty:

the envelope is addressed to mr. bishop knight in unfamiliar handwriting and the return address is one shitty’s had memorized since the month after he turned 12, though his mother hasn’t even looked at it once. he knows what it contains without even opening it: a birthday card and a signature. once there would have been thirty bucks too, but that stopped when he turned eighteen.

“hello-o-o,” lardo says from her bed. “coffee?”

“oh. right.” shitty’s still dressed from his solo trip to annie’s, so he sets the coffee tray down with the envelope on his desk and slowly unwinds his scarf, lovingly knitted by alicia zimmermann as a christmas gift. he unbuttons his jacket slowly, ignoring lardo’s impatient huffs.  

“you got snow in your hair,” lardo says, rolling her eyes. “it looks like dandruff.”

“hm?” shitty carefully strips himself of his shirt and pants and brings over the cups to the bed. it’s warmer in here, with lardo, than outside. “oh, yeah. it’s messy out there."

“what’s that,” lardo says, gesturing to the desk with the hand that’s holding her cappuccino. 

“christmas-slash-birthday card,” shitty says. “from my father.”

“oh. a little late for that.” then, slowly, “you gonna open it?”

shitty can’t help but lean into lardo’s side, and lardo lifts the arm not holding the coffee and wraps him up. takes him in. 

“no,” shitty says, and closes his eyes, smiling, “not this year.”

jack:

la route de la patinoire jusqu’à la maison n’est pas longue, mais avec la neige devenant de plus en plus épaisse, et bittle seul chez lui dans la noirceur, elle semble interminable. les tempêtes lui ont toujours fait sentir impuissant, mais – bref, ils ne sont pas uniques dans la catégorie.

son père lui a souvent dit qu’ils ont tous deux un « esprit cartésien », et c’est peut-être vrai, mais ce n’est que dernièrement qu’il le prend vraiment à cœur. étape par étape, sa thérapeute et ses parents lui répètent. donc, voilà : prends une droite après le stationnement ; continue lentement pour trois kilomètres ; attention à la glace ; maintenant, arrête à l’intersection ; compte un, deux, trois ; avance ; une gauche, et ensuite une droite ; un autre arrêt pour la vieille qui veut traverser le chemin ; quatre kilomètres, puis l’immeuble droit devant.

rends-toi au stationnement souterrain et trouve l’espace qui vous a été désigné. éteint le moteur. prends ton sac du siège à côté et va à l’ascenseur. fais-le vite, quand même – il ne faut surtout pas oublier qui t’attends. et puis cinquième étage, deuxième porte à la droite. ouvre-là.

– jack ? bittle dit. oh, i’m glad you’re home.

sa voix, douce et familière, provient du salon. le salon qui a de la lumière, donc la coupure n’aurait pas duré longtemps, jack suppose.

– me too, jack répond. roads are getting pretty bad.

bittle apparait dans sa vision, avec sa couverture la plus chaude autour de ses épaules et un grand sourire peinturé sur son beau visage. il tend une main vers jack, qui la prend fermement. voilà une chose qui ne lui a jamais fait sentir comme s’il ne pouvait rien faire.

un nouveau plan, alors. étape un : prend la main de celui que tu aimes. étape deux : respire, respire, respire…

dex:

nursey stops him at the door, which is just as well, probably, because he's been staring at it for five minutes, trying to decide if he’s going to go this week. like he does every week.

“where the fuck are you going like that?” nursey asks. he crosses his arms and dex can’t even meet his eyes. he’s been having trouble meeting them for a while, now. “it’s a storm out there. you don’t even -- fuck, dex, you don’t even have gloves on.”

“i’m fine, nurse,” dex says down at his shoes. 

nursey exhales, then shakes his head. “it’s not like i haven’t noticed you go out this time every sunday, you know.”

“i -- oh. um. i didn’t think you would.” dex bites his lip hard, then looks at the door. he hasn’t told nursey where he goes. or anyone at all. 

“fine. if you’re not going to take care of yourself...”

when dex looks up, nursey is pulling his jacket off a hook on the wall and stuffing his arms into it, then pulls out a pair of gloves from the pockets. 

“what are you doing?” dex asks. he feels panicked, suddenly, and reaches out to stop nursey’s hands. nursey just catches his and holds them tight.

“it’s non-denominational, isn’t it?” nursey asks. he brings dex’s knuckles to his lips and kisses them with a gentleness dex will never possess. 

fuck. 

“um.”

“i was waiting for you to tell me,” nursey says. “i figured you’d do it on your own time, or whatever.”

“oh.” 

he’s never really been one for words, anyway.

“dex,” nursey says. “can i come with you?”

dex looks back at the door, then at nursey, with a smile tentative and soft against dex’s hand.

So this is how it happens:

They’ve lost a game they really should have won, but the media kind of brushes it off by saying Samwell is “rebuilding” and “strengthening” which is true but it doesn’t make Jack less fucking angry. He’s angry a lot, actually, and still has a hard time asking for things he wants, which makes him angrier, but it’s why he’s been sharing a room with Shitty in the first place. He’d been too nervous to ask for a single hotel room when he signed his commitment to the university.

So he’s angry and frustrated and he just wants to hit something. He feels untethered, out of control. He just wants to be alone but he’s got this fucking eighteen-year-old kid chattering on, this dude who’s on his way to naked because he’s never had to deal with an unwanted stretch mark in his damn life. The mini-fridge is humming and distracting and the ventilation system is loud and it’s too goddamn much. He’s frustrated, and tired, and he goddamn left his weighted blanket at Samwell because like hell he was bringing that with him here. 

Okay. So that’s a little unfair. He likes Shitty. A lot, actually. Shitty’s interesting and likes talking about history with him and doesn’t mind having to fill his silences and rants a lot about things neither of them really understand, and even though he’s young sometimes Jack feels like he needs to relearn how to be young. He feels like he never really got the chance, what with the fame and the hockey and pills and the Kenny and how he never felt like he could relate to anyone his age, never knew how to act around them. Shitty never expects him to act a certain way, at least, and is generally very vocal about his feelings so Jack never has to guess. Another thing in common with Kent, then.

His therapist tells him he needs to ask for what he wants, though. And he agrees – in theory. It’s just – harder out loud. 

“Will you please stop talking,” he says, aware his accent is strong right now but unable to stop it.

“Shit, sorry brah, do you want to be alone?” And then he trips and falls on top of Jack which isn’t exactly like it happened with Kenny but Jack instantly stills, almost embarrassed at how quickly he relaxes but too relieved to push Shitty off. 

“Oof,” Shitty breathes, then goes to roll away. “Sorry about that, man. Still a little sore in my legs, ya know?” 

Jack’s arm snakes out from underneath him to grab onto Shitty’s wrist. “No, I need–” Fuck. He can’t say it.

“Jack?” Shitty’s voice is gentler now, and he hasn’t moved yet. “Tell me.”

Jack takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “Don’t move. Just stay,” he whispers.

“I’m going to hurt you if I stay too long,” Shitty says, though it’s not really a protest. More like concern. He leans his cheek on Jack’s collarbone.

It’s – nicer than a weighted blanket. Jack had forgotten how it felt – the feel of skin, hot breath against his neck, the steady heartbeat of another human so close to his that it’s easy to count out with. He feels safe, and grounded, and warm. Good. So good. 

“Hey,” Shitty says softly. When Jack opens his eyes the room is dark, and it’s late, and he hadn’t even realized how long they’d been laying there. “You alright now?”

He is. He really is. Without thinking he lifts his hand to find Shitty’s face in the dark and pulls it to his.

“Can I?” he asks. It’s more like a soft windy sigh. He feels Shitty nod against his palm, and then kisses him. 

This is good too – actually, it’s better than good. The weight and the feel of Shitty’s lips is so – Jack feels the last of his tension float away. Shitty’s kind of a sloppy kisser, but it doesn’t even matter, not really. It feels more than amazing. Like when he’d first realized that there were people out there who wanted to kiss him, despite his everything, or even because of it. 

Eventually, Shitty makes a pleased hum and pulls away, and Jack feels kind of lethargic and heavy. Good heavy.

“Now are you good?” Shitty asks. Like he knows.

“Yeah,” Jack says. His voice is hoarse and his lips feel wet and tingly. 

“I’m going to get off, brush my teeth and sleep right next to you, now. Okay?”

Jack hums in assent.

“Out loud, please,” Shitty says. His voice is gentle.

“Yes. You can get off now,” Jack says. 

Shitty pushes himself up so slowly it’s a wonder his arms aren’t shaking from the force of it, and then he’s gone and Jack is blinking sleepily in the light of the bathroom. 

Jack gets up and goes to the other bed to pull the comforter off and place it on top of theirs, and Shitty only nods when he comes back. 

“Jack,” he says once they’ve settled and Shitty’s thrown an arm over his torso. “When we get back to Samwell tomorrow, I’d like to talk about this.”

He tenses and feels Shitty’s arm squeeze tighter in response. 

“It’s not–” he begins but can’t continue. Shitty lets the silence ring for a few seconds, ostensibly waiting for the end of the sentence. When it doesn’t come, he squeezes again.

“It’s okay. I’m not mad, and I don’t want you to think that. You don’t have to worry about me not finding that like, enjoyable or whatever. Cause I did, brah. I just am going to need more info from you if we’re going to do that again.”

Jack breathes. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Soon Shitty’s sleeping and Jack feels the tug himself, and for once goes to bed calm, and quickly.